Panama

A country created in order to build a canal through it. The isthmus was Spain's transit point for Peruvian silver and was part of Colombia after independence. A French company under Ferdinand de Lesseps, fresh from Suez, tried to cut a sea-level canal from 1881 and failed spectacularly - perhaps twenty-two thousand workers died of yellow fever and malaria and the company collapsed in the largest financial scandal of the French Third Republic. When Colombia's senate rejected American terms in 1903, the United States backed a Panamanian separatist movement, sent a warship, and signed a treaty with a French agent within days that granted a Canal Zone in perpetuity. The canal opened in 1914, after Gorgas's mosquito control made the work survivable. The Zone was American territory cutting the country in two until riots in 1964 and the Torrijos-Carter treaties of 1977 set a handover for the last day of 1999. The United States invaded in 1989 to remove Manuel Noriega, a former CIA asset, and he was tried in Miami. The canal handles around five per cent of world maritime trade. Panama City is the capital. Drought has begun to limit transits. The country has about 4.4 million people. The canal locks were widened in 2016 to take far larger ships. Panama runs the largest ship registry in the world under its flag of convenience. The Darien Gap is the only break in the road from Alaska to Patagonia and is now a major migration route. Its currency is pegged to and interchangeable with the dollar.

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